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Mostly successful weekend - RonO's Ramblings

Aug. 23rd, 2009 02:53 pm Mostly successful weekend

As weekends go, this one hasn't been too bad. It has, however, been busier than maybe it should, but in some ways not as busy as I'd like. Yesterday was the real busy day, but today ended up being a bit busier than I'd originally planed.

Early last week I decided to quit putting some things off, and made eye doctor's appointments for robot_grrl and me. After looking at the various places covered by my insurance, I picked one and made appointments for 11:30 and 12:30 yesterday. But when I made the appointments, I'd forgotten that I also had an 8:45 appointment to donate blood.

So, yesterday I got up first (rare for a Saturday) and got a good breakfast so that I could head for the donor center. My donation when quickly and easily -- which is pretty normal for me, and I was home about the time they said I should be done. (OK, I probably left too soon, but sitting around eating too many of their snacks isn't helping me any).

Once I got home, I did some messing around on my computer -- some of which was mentioned or alluded to here and in the replies. But, before too long it was time to head to the eye doctors. We decided to head down together and I'd just wait even if it ended up being the full hour. It wasn't.

Since I was there early and signed in, I was called back while Tara was still with the actual D.O. Unfortunately, except that it did save us $30.00, they weren't able to get pictures of my retinas. But this did mean that they were had to dilate my pupils.

While I was getting my exam, and before and afterwards, Tara picked out new frames. I picked out mine quicker, after the main exam while waiting for my eyes to dilate. In the end we ended up with two eye exams, two new pairs of glasses (which we get in 7 to 10 days), including extra coatings on both, for less than what Tara paid the last time she got new glasses. Having a decent eye care plan from my employer does pay. (And yes, I do wish everyone had access to this kind of benefit, but I'm not sure I trust the current people who are wanting to provide it to do a good job -- I'm saying no more)

After that, we grabbed some lunch. We ended up at a local pizza place, Brooklyn Boyz [sic]. Their pizza wasn't bad, although it was clearly, and obviously, based on the kind of pizza one gets in Brooklyn, which is a bit different from what I'm used to with Chicago, Kansas City or Detroit based pizza varieties.

After lunch, we headed to Staples to get some school supplies for Derrick -- who is, for better or for worse, starting at the public middle school next week.

Oddly one of the things that was on the list was 3 hole punched graph paper. When I tracked down what Staples had, all that matched their requirements was pads of "engineering" paper -- which I've often had trouble finding outside of college bookstores.

I also found that they had a 8 gigabyte flash drive on sale for a reasonable price. So I picked it up, at least initially to perform an experiment, which I conduced once I got home.

The experiment was to see if I could install a bootable Linux system for my laptop onto the flash drive. I was successful, but it took two tries since the first time I goofed up and managed to leave me with a boot loader that could not load the native Windows system. However, I'm still having trouble getting it to successfully connect to the wireless network in the house (which may or may not be a key problem, but I'm 99% sure I've given it the right key)

Today our plan was to continue checking out churches. The church we checked out today was smaller than the one last week, but the pastor was much better. Last week, it was a mid-sized church but the interim pastor was very dull, and his message didn't reach us at all. A full time pastor might be much better, but not knowing how long they will be with the interim made me want to keep looking.

This church had a very good service, but at least this week, there weren't many people our ages. There was one young family with some toddlers, and two young marines (guessing by the hair cuts, the fact that the other reason I could think of for two young men sitting together like that being greatly reduced in a small Southern Baptist church, and the pastor's acknowledgment of some members of the military in the congregation), but most of the rest of the congregation were older than Tara and I. There are people on vacation, so this may change.

It was also a bit different, since the pastor both lead the music part of the worship and then preached the message, rather than having separate people do the two roles. But given the size of the church, this isn't too surprising.

After church, we decided to head to Souplantation to use an expiring coupon (even though we'd used a different expiring coupon last Sunday). But since we had time, we took our time finding our way there. As a result, we instead found an open house. However, once the realtor showed up, it turned out he didn't have the correct code and had to go back to his office. So we ate lunch and came back. The house we looked out would have been just about perfect, if it had been a bit less than half the price. But then again, how often do you get a 50% discount on million dollar views. But the realtor talked to us and then agreed to show us a different house also in Carlsbad that was much less expensive (in our price range). It is about the same size as our rental, but is nearly new inside and would probably work at least for a few years. But without knowing if we're going to have anything left after selling the Bartlett house early next month, we cannot even think of making an offer. But he has our information and will give us some ideas.

I'll also add that part of me is thinking that I might prefer to move to someplace closer to work (Rancho Bernado would be good, but there may be some other parts of San Diego that would work well too), and there is a slight consideration that my niece MIGHT choose to go to San Diego State next year (I think the University of New Mexico Lobo in me could forgive her for becoming a San Diego State Aztec -- a BYU cougar or a New Mexico State Aggie might be different), and it might be nice if we had some place where she could stay. If we could save her, or my brother, money on her schooling by giving her housing in exchange for some help around the house, it might not hurt anyone.

While, its been a bit of a busy weekend, and I should probably see if the rest of the family needs me for anything.